Hi! My name is Marcello Valerio, welcome to the tastyfood desserts and pastry blog. This is a blog I created to keep a log over my experiments in the kitchen (and I hope the recipes will work for you as well)!

Sunday, 15 August 2010

Yesterday it was time for a Raspberry Cheesecake. Cause I'd been out in the garden picking raspberries. I've adapted Junior's recipe (a famous New-York deli) and just dropped in some berries at the end. Actually I dropped in to many berries and I crushed some of them as well. DON'T DO THAT. It just tastes to much of raspberry, and is to acidic.I've you need a base just make your regular cheesecake base of digestives or whatever. Juniors use a spongy-type base, but I've never tried it out.

Just whip the cream cheese and sugar, then add the egg and cream. Don't overbeat. Bake for about 1 hour at 165C until set, and golden brown on top. Depending on the size of the cake tin the baking time could be much less, and it might set before it's browned (that's fine!).

Thursday, 12 August 2010

Yeah! Finally. I've been able to get hold of some cream of tartar (which is hardly available in Norway). Thank You Paula (my aunt)!

As Rose Levy Berenbaum says "it is virtually impossible to overbeat the whites with cream of tartar". Just add 1/8 of a tsp. for every egg white, after it starts to foam. Rose adds: "if you add the sugar to early the egg whites must be beaten longer, and volume may suffer." If you add it to late you might overbeat the whites, which is a common mistake.

And I must say it worked a dream. The first time in my life I've managed a stiff peak I think!I tried it out on this macaron recipe from david lebovitz:

You know Ice Cream can be made with no thickener, just cream and/or milk. However, I like it when it has a smoother consistency. Egg yolks are normally used (so called french style ice-cream) but in southern Italy they often use cornstarch. SO, I added a little cornstarch to thicken this Ice Cream, but I ALSO added egg yolk. What's good about this is that the cornstarch stops the egg from curdling if you were to overheat them. Also it means less egg yolk which means a less eggy flavour. Still searching for a perfect chocolate Ice-Cream though!

Recipe: This is a test quantity. It won't make a lot of Ice-Cream. Feel free to double and triple.

1. Scald the milk, while beating egg yolks and sugar in a bowl.2. Pour almost boiling milk slowly into egg yolks while beating. Pour back into pan.3. Warm slowly til it thickens, and the bottom of the pan start to simmer. The Cornstarch should keep it safe from curdling.4. Pour into a bowl of broken up chocolate and beat, or use an immersion blender to emulsify.

Monday, 2 August 2010

So it's time for Brownies. I've made them before but this time I wanted to try a new recipe. I searched the net and my books and here are five basic recipes (there's of course vanilla and nuts and stuff you probably should add to all of them). I've earlier tried Nigella Lawson and Rose Levy Berenbaums recipes, both of which I can post later.

I opted for the famous US pastry chef Nick Maglieri recipe, which is very similar to Alice Medrich's recipe. The difference being her unsweetened chocolate and 50g extra sugar to compensate for it. Below is written all the five formulas, one is from a food blog, can't remember which. On top is the Nick one.

Melt butter and chocolate. Stir in sugar, vanilla, salt, then eggs, then flour. Bake for 35-40 minutes on 175. I however did mine for 20min on 200 and they were to wet. So popped them back in for 10 minutes which almost did the trick. Try 35/45 next time Marcello! The taste however was wonderful! Especially with the Divine 70% chocolate which was no good in truffles. It almost tasted of coconut.

SO...Just melt the butter and chocolate over low heat. Add the sugar. Then the egg. Then the flour. And DO NOT overmix. Bake at 180C, until a tester comes out with a bit of batter on it. I'd say 35-50 minutes.

Sunday, 1 August 2010

I'd never made a chocolate cheesecake before. I just made a normal cheesecake but added 100g chocolate. I cut down a little on the cream cheese, since the cocoa butter provides structure when it sets up. I think the chocolate has a big impact and in this case the 70% chocolate was too acidic and the cake had a yogurt like tang to it. Anyway the base is tasty, and if you don't want gluten free, just use regular crackers.

Monday, 12 July 2010

Well, you might of tasted it before, but for me, vanilla homemade Ice-Cream made with egg yolks is somethin' else than your regular store-bought crap. It's basically just a custard that's been frozen and churned with an ice-cream machine or by hand (like the one in the picture has).

Cooking Instruciones:1. Bring milk to boil, pour into the eggs and sugar - whisk - put back on low heat and stir until thick - then pour into the cold cream.2. Refrigerate until Cold, preferably overnight. It makes for a smoother consistency. I actually curdled the custard, so I had to strain it. Wondering if it had a slight egg'y taste to it.3. Pour into icecream machinge, or just put in freezer and stir manually every 30 minutes til frozen.

Meringue Biscuit, or something.This is something I came up with just to use up the leftover egg whites, you could also make chocolate macaroons. Preheat oven to 180.50g egg white65g sugar9 hazelnuts, made into powder2 tsp. cocao powder Whisk Egg whites with sugar until they form stiff peaks and look glossy. Only add sugar after some structure has been formed. Fold in cocoa powder and 9 ground hazelnuts. Bake in oven 10-12 min.

Monday, 5 July 2010

So! Last night I decided to make homemade yogurt. I'd never done it before so this was a new experiment. After some research I found a formula that I thought might work.

Basic Recipe (and you can of course quadrupple the quantity):

200ml Milk1 Tbs. Yogurt (store-bought)flavouring/sugar (optional)Warm the milk to approx. 46 degrees. Take off heat - pour into something - THEN - stir in yogurt. Leave to stand 6-8 hours (or more), at (as close as possible to) 38C degrees - until it thickens.I added a hint of vanilla essence and a tsp. of sugar.

To obtain 38 degrees, I think leaving the oven on min. heat is the best option. However you could also leave it somewhere else that you know it gonna be warm. At least 30 degrees. The idea is that the ready made-culture is going to eat it's way into the milk and turn it into yogurt. The sugar might help speed up the process. I left it out overnight to begin with...

After 10 Hours At 20C there was not much happening.

In the morning I put it in the windowsil, with the direcct sunlight hitting it. That's when things started to happen.After 6 Hours at I'd say about 30C....Voila, it thickened (altough a bit on the runny side)! To further thicken it I used a musslin cloth and let it drip until it had the consistency I was looking for.

Me

Bio

I'm 29 years old and currently reside in Norway - where i study music - BUT - whenever I get the opportunity I bake cakes, desserts and candy. This site is a log over recipes so I can access them wherever I am, but maybe they will be of use to someone else out there on the WWW.